The East London Cemetery, Plaistow

East London Cemetery opened in 1872 and until recently (when it was taken over by Dignity) continued to be owned by the original founding company – the East London Cemetery Company.  The cemetery is still very much in use and many of the best monuments are of very recent date, the impressive Vassallo memorial, Tommy Lawrence, a giant dartboard and a moving memorial of a young boy with a football. Elizabeth Stride, Jack the Ripper’s third victim is buried in the cemetery as a number of First World war German spies who were executed in the Tower of London. There is a monument to the 38 people who died the day the HMS Albion was launched at the Thames Ironworks in 1898 and the grave of one of the many families who died aboard the Princess Alice in 1878 is marked with a granite obelisk. The Alnwick Mercury of Saturday 21 September 1878 describes their funeral at the cemetery:

Sunday afternoon a concourse estimated at about 5000 persons, assembled in the vicinity of the East London Cemetery, Plaistow, to witness the interment of a family of five, who perished by the recent calamity on the Thames. They were: Mr. George Davies. 41 years of age, Limehouse; Elizabeth Davies, his wife, aged 51; and George, 17; Thomas, 13; and Emily, 12, sons and daughters. The bodies were taken to their last resting place in five hearses, and were accompanied by between twenty and thirty mourning coaches and private carriages, which conveyed, in addition to the relatives of the deceased, many members of the Masonic body, to which Mr. Davies belonged. Flags floated half-mast high on Limehouse and Stepney steeples, and on other buildings, and various other places on tbe route manifestations of sympathy were displayed, the procession being joined by many who accompanied on foot. The entrance to the cemetery was kept by mounted police, and only those Immediately concerned were admitted within the grounds during the reading the Burial Service, which was performed by the rector of Limehouse. the conclusion the public were allowed to view the vault in which the unfortunate family was interred.

Impressive semi-public funerals for the victims of disasters were a feature of East End life in the late 19th and early 20 th centuries. Not everyone who attended these events behaved with the decorum one would expect. At the funeral of a family killed in a house fire in Bethnal Green a pickpocket was arrested according to the Chelmsford Chronicle  of Friday 07 January 1898:

On Tuesday  John Scott, 22, a costermonger, was charged with stealing a purse containing three farthings, in the East London cemetery, Plaistow.—W hen the victims of the Bethnal Green fire were being Interred Constable Hartridge, 533K, was on duty in plain clothes. He saw the prisoner and others acting suspiciously. Scott put his hand under a Mrs. Tilley’s cape, and turned sharply away. Having ascertained that Mrs. Tilley had lost her purse, the constable followed the prisoner, who threw the purse over a fence.—Remanded for a week.

Flowers left on graves were sometimes a temptation for people in straitened circumstances:

On Monday, at West Ham, Mary Barber, 77, lodging 86 Whitwell Road Plaistow, was charged with stealing some flowers and wreath ribbon, from a grave the East London Cemetery at Plaistow. It was stated that when told she would be charged, the old lady said,  “You can do what you like with me. You can cook me and eat me, but you'll find me deuced tough!"  The defendant was said have only 5 shillings a week from the parish for her support. Asked if she would go to the Workhouse, the old lady said she would sooner not, but eventually she consented to go, and was then discharged with a caution.  (Chelmsford Chronicle - Friday 26 August 1904)

Flowers were also the target of three women thieves according to Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper on Sunday 06 July 1884

Ann Amelia Rogers, 21, of 17, Church-street, Poplar; Winifred Hutchins, 27, same address; and Amelia Gamble, 38, all married women, were charged with being concerned in wilfully damaging a grave at the East London Cemetery, Plaistow, by destroying roses thereon to the amount of 2s., on the 30th ult. The prisoners were seen by the grave- diggers and two ladies to go to one of the graves and pluck six roses from a rose tree growing thereon and destroy the tree. Three of the roses they placed upon the grave of a friend of the prisoner Rogers;  each carried one away in her breast. Mr. Phillips remarked that it was a mean and despicable theft; anything more despicable he could not imagine. He fined each defendant 10s., and 5s. costs.





Memorial to First World War German Spies shot in the Tower of London and buried in the cemetery 



The Vassallo monument



The Vassallo monument

Peace to his ashes! Sir William Rawlins (1753-1838) St Botolph's Churchyard, Bishopsgate

Sir William Rawlins was a man who had very definite ideas on what he wanted for his funeral and he made sure that clear instructions were left in his will: “I desire that … my body may be placed in a lead coffin and that it be interred in the vault belonging to me in Bishopsgate Churchyard .….. That my funeral may be a walking procession and that it commence from my own house down Liverpool Street to the Catholic Chapel to turn on the lefthand up Bloomfield Street to the end of New Broad Street then through the Iron Gates up the said street to Bishopsgate Church Yard. I also desire that the entrance to my vault may be enclosed with good sound and solid brick work so as to prevent the further use thereof by any person whatever, and I also desire that a respectable mausoleum or tomb may be erected over the said vault of well manufactured polished Haytor Granite with designs of scientific excellence which may do honor to the artist whom my said executors hereafter named may think proper to employ. It is also my wish that a cast iron railing may be erected round my said tomb and to be at least five feet ten inches high and to be well painted four times in oil.”

Sir William Rawlins as a young man

He also had very definite ideas about how he should be remembered. According to the London City Press on Saturday 20 August 1859: "The late Sir William Rawlins, KT…… was very desirous to be held in remembrance by the Ward which he had represented and resided in many years. He, therefore, by a codicil to his will ….dated 18th of April, 1838, directed his executors to set apart a sufficient sum out of his personal estate as would produce a clear annual income of 15l., in the name of the Alderman of the Ward, the Deputy, and two others of the Common Council of the Ward of Bishopsgate Without (only), upon trust to keep his vault, then already built, and his tomb or mausoleum, and the iron railing, for which he had entered into a contract with Mr. Samuel Grimsdell to erect to his memory, at a cost of 315l., according to a plan of which he had approved, in good repair and condition......”  

Sir William’s will also included provision to pay for a “respectable” biannual dinner to be held on 24 July (his birthday) for the Alderman and the Common Council of the Ward of Bishopsgate Street Without, “the testator directs that, previous to dining, the tomb and railing shall be inspected, and the necessary orders given for the repairs and embellishments required; and that the codicil read at each dinner, in order that the same may be preserved fresh remembrance.” Each council man who attended both the inspection and the dinner was to receive a fee of one guinea.  According to the London City Press the eleventh biennial dinner was held on Monday 25 July (Rawlins will stipulated that if July 24 the dinner should be held on the following Monday) “at which Mr. Alderman W. T. Coneland, Esq., M.P., presided, supported in the vice-chair by W. H. Pilcher, Esq., Deputy. There were also present: R. Ashby, T. S. Owden, M. and J. Richardson, Esqs., Common Councilmen of the Ward of Bishopsgate Without, and who duly performed the functions of their office, as directed by Sir William Rawlins. The Alderman, after dinner, proposed the standing toast, "The pious memory of Sir William Rawlins." After the healths of the Alderman and Deputy, and several other toasts, the gentlemen departed, with the idea that "it's well to be remembered;" and so Sir William thought. Peace to his ashes! say we.”

Sir William in old age

When St Botolph’s churchyard was cleared of tombstones and other memorials Sir William’s trust fund for the upkeep of his rather splendid memorial seems to have been an obstacle to its removal. Apart from a handful of gravestones used as paving slabs and the Rawlin’s memorial the entire churchyard was emptied and converted to a garden. The initial £500 investment lasted until 2013 when the parish council used the last of the money to refurbish their last remaining churchyard memorial. The then Alderman of Bishopsgate, Neil Redcliffe, lead the Common Councilmen and local business leaders in a final inspection of the tomb and a graveside toast to Sir William before launching an appeal for funds for future restoration work. 

Sir William was born in Bridgecomb, Berkshire in 1753, the son of a farmer. At the age of 17 he became apprenticed to a London weaver but three years later was turned over to an Upholder and eventually gained the freedom of the Upholders Company. He became a successful business man and benefactor of the church and local schools who dabbled in politics. This dabbling cost him a couple of months in Newgate in 1805. He had become Sheriff of London in 1801 and after his term of service was knighted. In 1805 he and his fellow Sheriff Robert Cox were indited for election fraud in getting Sir Francis Burdett elected as MP for Middlesex. They were accused, and found guilty, of accepting at least 300 fictitious votes and thereby securing Sir Francis’ seat. Sir William went on to found the Eagle Insurance Company (later Eagle Star) and died in 1838 at the age of 84.    

"A clever but very eccentric person..."; Joseph Constantine Carpue (1764 - 1846), St Nicholas Churchyard, Chiswick

Carpue's family tomb in the churchyard at Chiswick

Saturday 2 October 1841 was a fine autumn day for an excursion to the coast. The 77 year old anatomist and surgeon Joseph Carpue escorted his four daughters from his house in Fitzroy Square to Victoria Station and put them in a first class coach on the Brighton train. As irrepressibly curious as ever and “anxious to see the structure of the Brighton line” (which had only been open for 11 days) from the best vantage point possible Carpue sat in an open carriage accompanied by two of his servants  Henry Palmer, aged twenty-three, a footman, and Jane Watson, also twenty-three, a housemaid.  The journey was without incident until the train arrived at Horley where an additional engine was attached to provide additional power to haul the carriages up the steep incline of the South Downs to the Balcombe Tunnel.  Once through the tunnel, as the train moved downhill towards Haywards Heath, it began to build up excessive speed and one of the two engines derailed taking with it the open carriages immediately behind, throwing Carpue and his servants onto the tracks. At the inquest James Jackson, the driver of the derailed locomotive, described the immediate aftermath of the accident, how he had stumbled around in the wreckage of the train amongst the dead and injured “I got between the carriages, when I discovered the deceased young woman lying across the rails…. she was also quite dead, one of the wheels having passed over her stomach, nearly cutting her in half. One of the guards threw his great coat over her….. Palmer was also lying on the line quite dead, his head being fractured in a shocking manner.”  William Elliot, surgeon and keeper of the Cowper House Lunatic Asylum at Brompton, was also present in the open carriage. In his evidence to the inquest he enlarged on the shocking manner of Henry Palmer’s death; “The first object that met his eye was the body of a servant in livery, and a little further on was his head completely severed, though the passing of one the wheels over the neck it was cut in half, and the brains scattered about in all directions. Near this was a female completely cut in half, the wheels of the engine having passed over her.”

Carpue by Charles Turner, mezzotint, published 1822

When Carpue recovered consciousness he immediately began calling for his family; “Are my daughters killed? Will any one inquire what has become of the Miss Carpues?” Badly injured as he was he got to his feet and began looking for them. He saw a dead body covered with his own cloak – unknown to him it must have been the body of Henry Palmer – and the corpse of a female who he assumed to be his own maidservant. To his joy he found his daughters still sitting in the first class carriage completely uninjured. The surgeon was eventually persuaded to lie down on a makeshift stretcher constructed out of a board and was carried to another carriage and taken to Brighton where he was met by his wife and taken to a friend’s house. According to a letter later written to one of the London papers Carpue credited his recovery to “my old friend Mr. Attree [who] immediately attended, and did not leave till he had applied, I believe, 100 leeches; and I beg to state, that to that gentleman's Judgment, attention, and unremitting kindness I owe my life.” Although he lived for another 5 years by all accounts Carpue never fully recovered from the shock of the accident. He took the railway company to court and “after a tedious process at law he obtained a verdict for damages in the sum of £250, most of which had already been spent in costs.”

Carpue was born in Brook Green, Hammersmith in 1764, to a family of Spanish catholic descent. He was educated at the Jesuit College in Douai and travelled extensively around France on foot before and during the Revolution. He saw Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette at the dinner table with Philip Egalité, Duke of Orleans, waiting on them and later in Paris listened to the speeches of Danton, Marat and Robespierre. His wanderlust continued all through his life and he later traveled, again on foot, through Wales, the Scottish Highlands, Holland, Italy, Germany and the Tyrol. He had trouble settling himself to a career; he had attended Douai with the intention of becoming a priest but abandoned the idea in favour of becoming a bookseller like his uncle. He then toyed with a career on the stage (his admiration for Shakespeare was so great that in later life he proposed erecting a colossal statue to the bard at the mouth of the Thames) but finally alighted on medicine. He studied at St Georges and become an accomplished anatomist and experimental surgeon. In 1801 he anatomised James Legg the executed Chelsea Pensioner for the benefit of three Royal Academicians who wanted to study the effects of crucifixion on the human body. In 1803 he was one of the fascinated audience of surgeons present when Giovanni Aldini used galvanic batteries to attempt the reanimation of another executed criminal, George Foster. Shortly afterwards he purchased his own electrical machine which he kept in his dining room to experiment on various fragments of human and animal corpses and he wrote a book on the subject “An Introduction to Electricity and Galvanism, with Cases showing their Effects in the Cure of Disease.” He also wrote books on human muscles, removing gall stones and a pioneering work on plastic surgery.

The 'Italian' method

Carpue published this “Account of Two Successful Operations for Restoring a Lost Nose,” in December 1815. The book surveys the history of early rhinoplasty, particularly the celebrated ‘Italian method’ which attached skin from the arm to the nose. The drawback of the Italian method was that severe cold weather often caused the transplanted nose to die and drop off. Carpue studied cases when noses which had been accidentally cut off were successfully sewn back into place and then adapted a technique used for centuries in India of rebuilding the nose using a flap of skin from the forehead which he had read about in an issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine. Carpue experimented with the technique firstly on a man who had lost his nose either through contracting syphilis or from the excessive administration of mercury to cure it. His second case was of an officer who had lost the end of his nose to a sabre at the Battle of Albeura in 1810. Both Carpue and his two patients were pleased with the result of the trailblazing operation though doubtless neither nose job would pass muster today.

J.F. South, twice President of the London College of Surgeons described Carpue as “a clever but very eccentric person. . . . a very good anatomist, who had but few pupils, and carried on his teaching by the very unusual method of catechism—for instance, he described a bone, and then made each pupil severally describe it after him, he correcting the errors whilst the catechisation proceeded. . . . I remember him a tall, ungainly, good-tempered, grey-haired man, in an unfitted black dress, and his neck swathed in an enormous white kerchief, very nearly approximating to a jack-towel.”  

    

Bust of Carpue by William Behnes - the inscription on the base is a stanza from
Thomas Hood's "Mary's Ghost; A Pathetic ballad" which  mentions the anatomist

Always funny, but without being vulgar - Charles Herbert 'Clifton' Barritt (1869-1929), Hampstead Cemetery

You might imagine that an funerary monument in the form of a life size pipe organ could only cover the grave of a church organist or a classical musician with a soft spot for Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.  There is some evidence Charles Herbert Barritt (1869 – 1929, more generally known as Clifton Barritt) knew how to play a medley on the concertina but nothing to indicate that he was an organist. Clifton seems to have spent most of his life as a vaudevillian and music hall entertainer and his last years as a London publican.

Born in Manchester Clifton was already treading the boards in his early twenties. A notice in a Belfast newspaper describes an appearance at the Carnmoney Masonic Hall in September 1892;

Mr Clifton Barritt, who has already, obtained honourable distinction in Manchester and other English cities as a musical and humorous entertainer, secured fresh laurels by his really able rendering of a number of songs and sketches written 'and composed by himself. He succeeded in keeping his audience convulsed with laughter from beginning to end. "A Penny Buys the Article" and "At the Pantomimes" were amongst his best performances. Mr. Barritt is quite a young man. and a short time will, no doubt, suffice to bring him into prominence as a successful and talented humourist.

At Folkestone's Victoria Pier Clifton finds himself fifth on the bill to the Blue Viennese Band conducted by Herr Wurm, the renowned contralto  Miss Jessie Goldsack,  tenor Elliston Webb and harpist and vocalist Clare Palmer. 

Local newspaper notices chart a ten year career that took Clifton from Ulster to the Isle of Man, Reigate to Grantham and all points in between, Hastings, Skegness, Bedford, Aylesbury, Folkestone, Loughborough…..there seems hardly a pier or Free Trade, Masonic or Town  Hall stage that did not feature Clifton’s mellow baritone or perfect comic timing at sometime between 1892 and 1904. At the annual dinner of the Higham Ferrars Athletic Club in February 1902 a concert was held of which Clifton was “the chief artiste.” At the Aylesbury Printing Works Institute New Years Gathering on January First 1903 “Mr. Clifton Barritt was seen to advantage in his musical sketches, his imitations of farmyard animals, etc.. being particularly clever….. “ On St Patricks Day 1904 at Mr Cross’s Concerts in Manchester “the concert was interspersed with humorous; sketches of equally Irish extraction, by Mr Clifton Barritt.”

His best notice was featured in the Sussex Agricultural Express of 17 October 1903 for a concert held in Uckfield Public Hall; 

Mr. Barritt was responsible for the comic element. He showed how songs of the ephemeral type could be arranged by Sousa, Mendelssohn, and Wagner but was at his best in his imitations. He successively imitated a rusty phonograph, a violoncello (using Elgar's "Saint d'Amour), a clarinet, banjo, and finally two instruments together, the mandolin and cornet (in "Whisper and I shall hear' ). Again he showed "The charge of the Light Brigade' could be recited by people afflicted with various eccentricities. has a fund of racy anecdotes, and is always "funny without being vulgar."

This madcap eventually rejected his nomadic existence wandering the provinces of England and settled down. His eldest son Robert was born in 1900 and perhaps the presence of a child in his life made him decide to make Robert’s mother Hannah Harriet Law (known as Hattie according to the gravestone) an honest woman, though he took his time, not marrying her until 1906. The couple had two more children, Chilton and Constance, once Clifton had given up the stage. We know he was the publican of the Savoy Palace a pub in Savoy Street WC1 in 1911 because the whole family is on the census return for that year along with a potman, two barmaids and a children’s nurse. He went on to become the publican at the Blue Posts at the St Pancras end of  Tottenham Court Road from 1915 until his death in 1929 when his wife Hannah took over the running of the business. Clifton died at the age of 60 on 21 July 1929 at 71 Ladbroke Grove, W11 leaving a not inconsiderable legacy of  £11,631 3s 10d to Hannah.

 

In the bar at the Blue Posts - 1940 by Bayes.

St Patrick's Roman Catholic Cemetery, Leytonstone



“A scruffy closely packed cemetery sited on the edge of the Central Line. Few trees and the lack of coherent landscaping contribute to its desolate appearance. It was opened to cope with the nineteenth century population explosion in Hackney which increased from 18,000 in 1861 to 125,000 in 1875. The tombstone names indicate the Roman Catholic status of the cemetery, most are Irish, Italian, and Polish. 168,000 burials have been recorded and to cater for the continuing demand the land is being reclaimed by adding a six feet deep layer of earth over old graves.”

Meller & Parsons – “London Cemeteries.”

It was opened in 1868 and is one of only two Roman Catholic cemeteries in London (the other being a sister cemetery in West London, St Mary’s, Kensal Green).  Buried somewhere here are Mary Jane Kelly, one of the Ripper's victims, Timothy Evans who was convicted and hanged for the murders at 10 Rillington Place but subsequently pardoned when the real murderer was discovered to be John Christie, and four of the five nuns who were killed in the wreck of the Deutschland in 1875.  

On 31 May 1896 Lloyds Weekly Newspaper reported on the funeral of the three children of an Irish dock worker, Patrick Sullivan, killed by smoke at a house fire in Aldgate.

“Yesterday the three little girls who were suffocated at 4, Little Somerset Street, AIdgate, were buried at the Roman Catholic cemetery at Leytonstone. The children were named as Katherine Sullivan, aged six; Johanna, aged three, and Ada Mary, aged one year and six months. A representative of Lloyd's saw the bodies in their coffins, and beyond a discolouration over the upper lip of the eldest child there were no indications of violent death. There was a profusion of flowers in the humble room, the gifts of neighbours, and Mrs. Brown, the florist of Globe-road, Mile-end, sent three beautiful floral crosses, with a kind note to Mrs. Sullivan. Each coffin lid, in addition to the name of deceased, had a raised white metal cross. For some time be- fore the procession started both Little Somerset - street and Mansel - street, alike exceedingly narrow, were blocked with spectators. The coffins were laid on an open car, and the flowers piled on its roof. Two coaches followed containing parents and relatives. The cortege reached Leytonstone without incident. At the cemetery the chaplain met the bodies, which were carried into the pretty little chapel, and at the altar and afterwards at the grave went through the Office for the Dead. There was a large assembly at the cemetery.”



In 1895, in an incident similar to a better known one at Kensal Green Cemetery, 38 year old Joseph Dennis, an undertaker's assistant “dropped dead in the Roman Catholic cemetery at Leyton, on Thursday last, whilst carrying a corpse to the grave. Lawrence Doyle stated that he was one of the mourners at the funeral. The deceased was one of the bearers, and had gone some yards towards the grave when witness saw him give a lurch and become unsteady. Witness rushed forward just in time to prevent the coffin falling, as the deceased fell forward on the gravel. The medical evidence showed that death was due to sadden failure of the heart.”




Tapped 66 times of 240 gallons of water - Dame Mary Page (1672-1728), Bunhill Fields

Sir Gregory Page was a wealthy London merchant and shipwright and the M.P. for Shoreham in West Sussex.  He inherited his fathers brewery in Wapping but made his fortune in the East India trade, eventually becoming a director of the East India Company. He died  an immensely wealthy man in Greenwich in 1720 leaving his eldest son £700,000 and his wife and other children £100,000. He was buried in Greenwich but his ‘relict’ (i.e. wife who survived her husband) Mary Page, daughter of Sir Thomas Trotman of London is buried at Bunhill Fields, though like her husband she also died at Greenwich. The couple married in 1690 when he was 21 and she was 18 and they had four children, two girls and two boys. Her rather plain chest tomb is famous for the following inscription: 

Here Lyes DAME MARY PAGE,

Relict of Sir Gregory Page, Bart.

She departed this life March 4 1728, 

in the 56th year of her age.

And on the other side:

In 67 months she was tap'd 66 times

had taken away 240 gallons of water 

without ever repining at her case 

or ever fearing the operation.

240 imperial gallons converts to about 1,100 litres. Her contemporaries believed she suffered from dropsy but she is now widely acknowledged as being the first recorded case of Meigs syndrome (“In medicine…is the triad of ascites, pleural effusion and benign ovarian tumor (fibroma),” according to Wikipedia….)

A Living Colossus; the Surprising Irish Giant - Charles Byrne (1761-1783), the Hunterian Museum, London

HRH visits Charles Byrne, the Irish Giant, at the Hunterian museum. The tiny skeleton  standing next
to Byrne belongs to Caroline Crachami  the Sicilian Fairy.

“June 1.  At London, aged 22, Byrne, the famous Irish giant. His death is said to have been precipitated by excessive drinking. His body was carried to Margate, in order to thrown into the sea, agreeable to his own request; he having been apprehensive that the surgeons would anatomise him. Byrne, in August 1780, measured exactly 8 feet; in 1780 he had gained 2 inches; and after his death he measured 8 feet 4 inches.”

The Scots Magazine, June 1783

“The whole tribe of surgeons put in a claim for the poor departed Irishman and surround his house just as Greenland harpooners would an enormous whale.”

The Morning Herald, June 1783

Charles Byrne, the Irish Giant, died of grief and gin at the age of 22 after his pocket was picked of his £700 life savings when he was out boozing on the London streets. £700 was a lot of money in 1783 and Byrne had amassed his small fortune exhibiting himself in freak shows. He was born in Drummullan in County Tyrone in 1761 the offspring of a mixed marriage between an Irish father and a Scottish mother. At the age of 20 a local huckster, Joe Vance, convinced his parents to let him start showing Byrne at local fairs and then travelled with him to London via Scotland (at Edinburgh “he alarmed the watchmen at the North Bridge one morning by lighting his pipe at one of the lamps without even standing on tiptoe,” according to the 1922 edition of the DNB).

In London he was a great success, exhibiting himself at Cox’s museum, living next door in an apartment with custom built furniture, above the cane shop in Spring Garden Gate. He was on show from 11am to 3pn and 5pm to 8pm six days a week and became, briefly, the talk of the town, visited by everyone from the King and Queen and the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. By November 1782 London was beginning to lose interest; Byrne moved from Cox’s in Charing Cross to the Hampshire Pig in Piccadilly and reduced the entrance fee to 2 shillings and six for Ladies and Gentlemen and 1 shilling for children and servants in livery. Byrne’s allure was further reduced when a rival Irish Giant, Patrick Cotter threatened to remove to London from his home in Bristol and then, even worse, a pair of 7 foot 2 Irish identical twins, the Knipes, also pitched up unexpectedly. The original Irish giant took to drink and was relocated again to Cockspur Street in Charing Cross where the price of admittance was reduced to 1 shilling for all.      

Charles Byrne in the company of the Knipe twins and various dwarfs and Lord Monboddo

In April 1783 disaster struck when Byre took himself on a “lunar ramble and was tempted to visit the Black Horse, a little public house facing the Kings Mews.” By the time he got home, and when it was too late to do anything about it, Byrne found that he had been robbed of the £700 in banknotes that he carried around with him under the impression that no one would dare to steal from a giant. The loss devastated him and made him drink even more. To add to his woes he had developed a serious cough which showed all the signs of being consumption. He managed to stagger on through May but died at Cockspur Street on the first of June.

Byrne's skull

Several noted collectors of anatomical curiosities had shown an interest in acquiring his body but Byrne was horrified at the thought of being butchered and displayed after his death. He left instructions that he was to be buried at sea in a lead coffin. John Hunter bribed one of Byrnes associates £500 to get the body for him. Byrnes friends seem to have been a mercenary lot – during the wake they displayed his corpse in its eight foot coffin to all comers for 2 and 6 (note that in death he commanded the same fee as at the height of his fame). At an overnight stop on the way to the Kent coast at Margate Byrne was removed from the coffin and dispatched back to Hunter in London whilst the empty casket was filled with rocks to imitate the weight of the dead man. Whilst the rock filled coffin was being dropped into the sea from fishing boat Byrne was back on his way to London where Hunter carefully sectioned his corpse before boiling it in a large copper vat to remove the flash.

Campaigners are currently trying to get the Royal College of Surgeons to surrender Byrne's skeleton in order to fulfill his last wishes and bury him at sea. In December 2011 Len Doyal, emeritus professor of medical ethics at Queen Mary, University of London, and Thomas Muinzer, a lawyer at the School of Law, Queen's University, Belfast, wrote to the British Medical Journal calling for the skeleton to be buried at sea "as Byrne intended for himself". Dr Sam Alberti, director of the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, rejected the call, saying "The Royal College of Surgeons believes that the value of Charles Byrne's remains, to living and future communities, currently outweighs the benefits of carrying out Byrne's apparent request to dispose of his remains at sea.”

Charles Byrne's wake from the University of Warwick website

Exquisite corpse – Marchesa Luisa Casati (1881-1957), Brompton Cemetery

“Quite suddenly and simply by chance, I once met a bizarre lady while taking tea with some friends in London. She arrived wearing black velvet from head to foot, her mouth painted blood red, and carrying a very tall umbrella with a decorated handle. And, you must understand, this ensemble was being worn in the middle of the day. This picturesque ruin of a woman was very tall and thin, and gave the impression of formidable strength. It was then I was introduced to the Marchesa Luisa Casati for the first and last time. She had made her entrance into that room looking wonderful and saying very little. She wasn’t beautiful—she was spectacular. Here was a woman possessing a presence one would never forget.”

Quentin Crisp

 

Luisa Casati in Paris,
photographed by Man Ray

Once fabulously wealthy and a member of all the most elite European social and artistic circles,  the Marchesa Luisa Casati lived in London after the war in relative poverty, moving from one rented flat to another and only just keeping one step ahead of her creditors. Her belongings once filled mansions and townhouses across the continent but were now reduced to a tattered collection of frocks and fripperies; a stuffed lions head, a broken cuckoo clock, a fragment of finger, supposedly a relic of St Peter, amongst other worthless junk. She dressed only in black, someone once described her late London outfits as resembling 'the plumage of a shabby raven'. She rummaged in the bins outside the Chelsea Palace Music hall and came away with scraps of monkey fur,  fabric and feathers to tart up her outré costumes. Because she could no longer afford kohl she ringed her eyes with boot polish. Towards the end of her life all her old friends were dead but she stayed in touch with them through séances conducted in her flat. In time she came to believe she had powers of telepathy and stopped contacting even her living friends, preferring to rely on thought transference to communicate.

Another Man Ray portrait of the Marchesa

When she died of a stroke in 1957 Harrods handled the funeral arrangements, laying her out in their chapel before the interment at Brompton Cemetery. Her funeral finery consisted of her best black dress, a leopard skin coat that had seen better days and a new pair of false eye lashes. An old friend for former days, a stuffed pet Pekingese, joined her in the coffin. The day of the funeral was unseasonably cold and there were few mourners Her memorial is modest for a woman who once amassed debts amounting  to millions of dollars and her name is misspelled Louisa as though she were English.

 

Luisa by Augustus John

Luisa Amman was born in January 1881 in Milan, the youngest daughter of a father who, when he died in 1896, reputedly left the 15 year old Luisa and her older sister the richest women in Italy. She married Camillo, Marchese Casati Stampa di Soncino in 1900  and became the Marchesa Luisa Casati. The couple had one child and then lived apart until the Marchese died in 1946. Luisa became a celebrated society hostess, muse and patron to innumerable artists, the lover of Gabriele d'Annunzio, an eccentric and femme fatale. She commissioned portraits or sculptures of herself by Giovanni Boldini, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Romaine Brooks, Augustus John (whose judgement on his patron was “Luisa Casati should be shot, stuffed and displayed in a glass case”), Kees van Dongen, and Man Ray. Before the First World War she took up residence in at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice where she held fabulous parties with gold painted servants, mechanical birds in gilded cages, a pride of white peacocks and a pair of cheetahs with jewelled collars that she took for walks along the canal side. According to one of her biographers  “for a summer of drug abuse on the island of Capri, she packed a wardrobe of black Morticia gowns, dyed her hair green, and paraded through the village streets with a crystal ball, followed by a retainer in gold body paint.”

 

 

Her clothes were as eccentric as their owner and she has become something of a fashion icon, influencing designers such as John Galliano and Alexander McQueen and even has a fashion house, Georgina Chapman and Keren Craigs ‘Marchesa’, named after her. High living destroyed Luisa’s fortune and by the 1930’s she had debts amounting to $25 million dollars. She was forced into bankruptcy and the houses, villas, paintings, jewels, exotic animals, and haute couture were all sold off to pay her debts. Her only daughter had married into the British aristocracy and  a penniless Luisa had to live in London as the only alternative to starving in Paris, Rome or Milan.   

Barbe Maria Theresa Sangiorgi (1834-1893), Brompton Cemetery

“Sculptural interest: a marble tomb featuring a sculpture of a youth strewing flowers on the grave, finely sculpted in a dramatic and emotive fin-de-siècle style rarely seen in English cemeteries * Historic interest: the portrait medallion and the wording of the dedication, as well as the style of the monument itself, express the Italian identity of those commemorated and reflect the cosmopolitan character of late-C19 London….The monument would not look out of place in the famous Cimitero Monumentale Di Staglieno in Genoa, but it is highly unusual in an English context.”

 

English Heritage

Barbe Maria Theresa Sangiorgi was the widow of Auguste Kettner a Frenchman who allegedly had been Napoleon III’s chef during the second empire (but before the Emperor was forced to live in exile in the suburbs of south-east London at Chislehurst).   In 1867 Kettner opened a modest restaurant in what was then Church Street (now Romilly Street) in Soho.  According to Nathaniel Newnham-Davis in his “Gourmet’s Guide to London” (1914), it “was the first small restaurant that dared to show its kitchen to all comers at a time when the kitchens of most foreign restaurants were places of horror.” The restaurant was discovered and publicised by a correspondent of The Times and became successful enough for Kettner to expand by leasing 3 neighbouring properties and knocking down party walls to create a large public dining area and converting the upstairs into private dining rooms.  “In 1877 two events of great importance to M. Kettner happened,” says Newnham-Davis, “he wrote his ‘Book of the Table’ and he died….”  Kettner’s ‘Book of the Table’ was in fact written by the journalist Eneas Sweetland Dallas with Kettner’s name used as a marketing device.  The name of the restaurant was so established that there was no question of changing it following Kettner’s death; in fact it is still open today, at the same address under the same name.  

Barbe Kettner seems to have continued running the business alone following her husbands death but “when her days of mourning had passed,“ says Newnham-Davis, she “married M.  Giovanni Sangiorgi, who became her partner in the business, a kindly man who keeps a watchful eye on the restaurant.”  The couple married in Edmonton in April 1880.

Giovanni was, according to his naturalisation certificate of 1883 a “native of Imola in the Kingdom of Italy, of the age of 34 years, a Restaurant keeper and is married but has no children.” Giovanni would have been 31 at the time of the wedding, Theresa a wealthy widow of 46 so it is perhaps not surprising there were no children.  By the time of the 1891 census the couple were living in Church Street with Giovanni’s aged parents and his younger sister Giacomina.

 

Barbe died in 1893 leaving a fortune of £10, 431 7 shillings and 6 pence solely to her husband. The restaurant received a good deal of unexpected publicity in 1895 at the trials of Oscar Wilde. Kettner’s was a favourite restaurant of Wilde’s and he frequently entertained friends and acquaintances in the private dining rooms on the first floor. These friends were often good looking young men, and included Bosie, Alfred Taylor (who was convicted of sodomy along with Wilde and sentenced to two years hard labour), the Parker brothers, William and Charles (who were male prostitutes), and Sidney Mavor (who may also not have been averse to charging for his favours at the time but later became a C of E clergyman). Any notoriety seems to have only added to the allure of Kettner’s and it continued to do very good business and attract a very exclusive clientele including Edward, Prince of Wales, who entertained Lillie Langtry in another pf the first floor private dining rooms.  In 1897 Giovanni made the shrewd business move of forming a company to control the restaurant and floating it on the stock exchange. The adverts for the stock release show that the owners of the company hoped to raise £50,000 in £1 shares and £30,000 in debentures which would have released very tidy sum in ready cash to Giovanni. He died at the age of 62 on May 10, 1909. His body was shipped to Lugano in Italian speaking Switzerland for interment but his sister Giacomina added his details to Barbe’s monument even though he had chosen not to be buried with her.  

1930's advert for Kettner's.

"The Lately Discovered Depredations at Lambeth Burial Ground" - grave robbing south of the river 1794.

A shadow of its former self - Lambeth (or Paradise Row) burial ground in Lambeth High Street

“At a short distance from the church is another burying ground, belonging to the parish; it is divided into the upper, middle, and lower grounds. It is very much crowded, and the tomb-stones are deeply sunk in the earth; the state of the ground has rendered it necessary to discontinue the practice of interment. Bones are scattered about, and a part of the ground has been raised. The neighbourhood is thickly populated; the soil is very moist, and water flows in at the depth of four feet.”

                                              

Gatherings from Graveyards, George Alfred Walker (1839)

The Lambeth burial ground, sometimes known as Paradise Row burial ground stands on Lambeth High Street a quarter of a mile away from St Mary’s church. The ground was opened in 1705 as an overspill graveyard, enlarged in 1814 and closed in 1853. It is now a public park with gravestones lined up against the boundary walls. Much of Lambeth was a poor area with a high mortality rate and frequent interments. This made the burial ground a target for resurrection men who supplied the anatomists of Guys and St Thomas’ Hospitals with their raw material. On the night of 18 February 1794 several grave robbers were disturbed in their work in the burial ground. They escaped but next morning, according to newspaper reports, “great numbers of the parishioners repaired to the ground, and having learnt that such thefts had often been practised, were so alarmed at the apprehension of their deceased relatives having suffered such a fate that they were determined to dig up their graves, and try whether they were there or not.”       

The Parish Officers did their best to dissuade the crowd from reopening en masse the graves of their relatives but people were determined to discover the truth. Pickaxes, spades and shovels were produced and more than a hundred coffins were summarily exhumed and examined. Only a fraction of the coffins contained corpses – around 10 or 12 according to the newspapers, who added “the whole neighbourhood, during the day, was one scene of anxiety, grief and lamentation.”  The incident was considered so shocking that a few months later a general meeting was held by the representatives of the London Parishes in the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand to consider the “lately discovered Depredations in Lambeth Burial Ground.” The minutebook of St Thomas’ parish in Bermondsey gives a full and detailed account of the meeting:   

" . . . It appeared, that the robberies of the said Burial Grounds, were discovered by three men being disturbed as they were conveying from thence five human bodies in three sacks, in the night of the 18th of February last.

That in consequence of such discovery, people of all descriptions, whose relations had been interred in that Ground, resorted thereto, and demanded to dig for them; which being refused they in great numbers forced their way in, and in spight of every effort the Parish Officers could use, began like mad people to tear up the ground; at the same time, charging the Officers and every one that offered them any opposition, with being privy to the robberies, and in general terms threatening them: thus circumstanced, the Parish Officers finding nothing but down-right force, (and that of more strength than the civil power) could prevent the populace, and fearing to bring on a riot (which in its effects might produce the most serious consequences) after having used every effort, short of force, were necessitated to give way, and let the people go on in their searches; by which a great number of empty coffins were discovered, the corpses having been stolen from them; great distress and agitation of mind was manifest in every one, and some, in a kind of phrensy, ran away with the coffins of their deceased relations; and the generality of the populace were so ripe for mischief, that they attacked a house with stones and brick-bats, upon the bare suspicion that the occupier had been concerned in, or privy to the robbery of the ground, and it was with difficulty they were prevented from demolishing it.



Resurrection men at work - by Phiz

To restore order, and discover the offenders if possible, a large reward was offered, and the committee aforesaid appointed; by whose enquiries, it was found that the Grave Digger, and three other persons were the robbers, and that the bodies had been conveyed away in a coach to different people for various purposes, as was made appear to them by informations upon oath; the material parts of one of which informations being now read, showed, that within the knowledge of the informant, eight surgeons of public repute, and a man who calls himself an Articulator (and by hand-bills openly avows the trade, exclusive of others of less note) are in the constant habit of buying stolen dead bodies, during the winter half year; in whose service the following fifteen persons are generally employed, namely, Samuel Arnot, alias Harding; John Gilmore, Thomas Gilmore, Thomas Pain, Peter McIntire, alias Mc Intosh, James Profit, Jeremiah Keese, Moris Hogarty, White, a man called Long John the Coachman, John Butler, John Howison, Samuel Hatton, John Parker; and Henry Wheeler, whose depredations have extended to thirty Burial Grounds that the informant knows of; and that grave diggers, and those intrusted with the care of Burial Grounds, are frequently accessory to the robberies, and receive five shillings per Corpse for every one, that with their privily is carried off, by which means many hundreds are taken from their grave annually.

That with the Surgeons and with the men above alluded to, there is a set price for dead bodies, Viz. for an Adult, two guineas and a Crown, and for every one under age, six shillings for the first foot, and nine per inch for all it measures more in length; that the bodies thus procured are used here in various ways, and the flesh by some burnt, by others buried, and by others the informant did not know how it was disposed of; that some bodies are prepared and made into Skeletons, and sent to America, and the West Indies; and many with the flesh on, or made into Skeletons, are sent into different parts of the Kingdom.

By another informant upon oath, the whole of which was also now read, it appeared that the aforesaid Articulator, makes the most wanton use of some that fall into his hands, substituting human skulls for nail boxes, and having the Skeleton of a Child, instead of a doll, for his own child to play with.

The Chairman 'also acquainted the meeting, that from other evidence (which though not yet upon Oath yet such as may be relied on) information is given that experiments have been tried and perfected, whereby human flesh has been converted into a substance like Spermaceti, and candles made of it, and that Soap has also been made of the same material."